Heritage Evolves Into `Lamentations' For Black Dancer

December 09, 1990|by KATHRYN WILLIAMS

hrough the many women in her family, Philadelphia dancer Brenda Lee has learned of the emotions that have given black women the determination to survive in America. Emotions like pain and pride, deep sorrow and persevering faith, anger and love, bitter depression and hope.

Lee will attempt to convey these emotions in "Lamentations of a Black Woman," to be performed Saturday and next Sunday at the Walnut Street Theater in Philadelphia in an effort to put the plight of African-American women in perspective.

"The public needs to know. They've heard about it, they've read about it, but there's something about visualization that makes you feel it," Lee said in an interview last week. The production, which Lee terms a choreodrama, uses modern dance and song to chronicle the life of a black woman who is kidnapped from her homeland, sold into bondage, and eventually sees the dawn of the civil rights movement.

At 27, with a youthful, almost sugar-sweet voice, Lee seems an unlikely person to be carrying the burdens of generations of black women. "I don't know why I have this little voice. People never know that I have a bleeding heart until I begin to talk," she explained.

"From a young age I have been one of those people who carries the weight of the world. I believe that is something innate with all artists. There's something in our psyche that makes us look a little bit deeper into the issues of life. When we're depressed, we're very depressed. And when we're happy, my God, we're almost manic. You cannot calm us down."

Lee has been gathering material for "Lamentations" her whole life. One great source was her great-grandmother, who died two years ago at the age of 101. "And until the time of her death, she was very literate. From her, I gained a whole wealth of insight.

"She was a sharecropper. She specifically remembered so much of what is going to be shown in this production.

"The sharecroppers were supposed to be paid a certain wage, but (the landowners) would always cheat them because they thought (blacks) could not count. They could count but they had to take what (landowners) gave them because they had no other way to survive.

"I also have aunts who marched with Martin Luther King. I have a wonderful family of black women who have been active in the struggle."

Seeing her family survive hardship was a great inspiration. "Seeing them come home with nothing, yet there was always food on the table. Seeing my mother work 16-hour days. Yet we were always mannerful, brought up with a lot of faith and hope. We weren't like the kids of today," said Lee, adding that the show also deals with current problems of black youth.

Lee is concerned that even many of her peers aren't aware of the black struggle in this country, and that perhaps there was no one to tell them the stories. "My mother told us of when she and her sisters wore potato sacks for their clothes. My father had no shoes. He used to take cardboard, when it was cold, and strap it to his feet to get to work.

"When people don't know about these things, they don't have the strength that comes from that knowledge. And that's another reason why we're lamenting."

In "Lamentations," in between what she learned from her great-grandmother and the problems of today's youth, lies the autobiographical material. "It's funny because whenever we do concerts, my closest sister in age to me says, `In all of your concerts you tell all your business.' But I can't help that. Art does imitate life, at least for me."

One of four sisters, Lee is married and has a three-month-old daughter, but she is well aware of the number of black women who aren't so lucky.

One topic dealt with in the play is the fact that eligible, educated young black men are extremely rare in this country right now. The anger black women feel when they see young black men with white women is portrayed in the production. "But we deal with it in a positive view because really, love has no color." This message ultimately ties the whole play together at the end. "Even though we are black women we are really sisters of all women."

The choreodrama intrigues Lee because of her diverse interests. "I have always sung, I write music, I play the piano. I've always sung in choirs, directed choirs. When I went to the High School of Performing Arts, I took lots of drama and also at the Philadelphia College of the Arts." She singled out dance when forced to choose one subject for her degree.

Lee began her professional company, based at her studio in the Mount Airy section of Philadelphia, in 1981. The company exists without funding from governmental sources. "We exist through community support and that is something I am extremely proud of."

Lee tries to keep a high profile for the company by doing a lot of charitable functions, even picking up the neighborhood from time to time, and her public relations work has paid off.

"Last year we did a piece called `The Civil Rights Ballet.' And it chronicles, of course, just the civil rights movement. We were so excited because we were asked to perform it at Cabrini College. They were having terrible race problems there. Out of 2,000 students there were like 100 blacks, who kept waking up in the morning and `nigger' would be written on their door. It was terrible.

"They gave me a call for Black History Month and asked us to perform the `Civil Rights Ballet'. And most of the audience was white. I loved it." Many people from the audience stayed to let them know how moved they were, and Lee is hoping for a similar response from a multi-racial audience for "Lamentations."

The Brenda Lee Dance Company performs "Lamentations of a Black Woman" at 7:30 p.m. Saturday and next Sunday at The Walnut Street Theater, Studio Three, 825 Walnut St., Philadelphia. For information, call 549-4559.